Line of Sight: Vietnam

PUBLISHER: INFOGRAMES.

DEVELOPER: NFUSION INTERACTIVE

GENRE: FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER

ESRB RATING: MATURE; BLOOD, VIOLENCE

PRICE: $29.99

REQUIREMENTS: PENTIUM II 550, 128MB RAM, 200MB HARD DRIVE SPACE

RECOMMENDED REQUIREMENTS: PENTIUM III 1GHZ, 256MB RAM

MULTIPLAYER SUPPORT: LAN, INTERNET (2-32 PLAYERS)

My mission is to assassinate a local Vietcong officer. A helpful Vietnamese peasant girl is supposed to lead me down the tricky pathways and point out the officer, but the moment I start, she bolts off. After awkwardly running to catch up with her, I look back to see my spotter/partner stuck in a log. Switching over to him, I get unstuck, switch back, and then haul ass to again follow the girl, only to see that she��s way down the path, not caring about me being lost. Thankfully, my compass points me toward my mission objective (so why did I need to follow her?), but as I��m walking, I get pegged in the head by a VC. After a reload, I shoot him and proceed to belly-crawl, hiding behind bush thick and thin the rest of the way. However, VC soldiers, despite being behind an even thicker bush, manage to zero in on my head while I��m silently behind cover.

A reload later, I crawl forward, firing my gun at random intervals; the noise triggers an aggressive reaction within the VC that reveals their position. Thankfully, this mission is in daylight: My night vision goggles only put a green filter over the land, becoming less-than-absolutely-useless. (Funny how the VC, having no night vision, can still see my camouflaged, prone body.)

I stumble onto a fortified position, with three or so VC shooting down on me. As I��m frantically running around, trading fire with them, the peasant girl stands in the middle of all this, doing absolutely nothing. I guess she��s magically shielded from all the bullets. She finally leads me to the officer, who I promptly snipe with my rifle, leaving her to stand in the wilderness alone, doing and saying nothing. I have trouble leaving because I somehow keep running into invisible force-fields that prevent me from going down perfectly open paths. After haphazardly meandering around, baby-sitting my spotter and making sure I save frequently, I make it to the exit point.

That��s one of the 12 missions in Line of Sight: Vietnam. Ugh.

VERDICT (1.5): The VC are dirty cheaters in this lush but restrictive and nonsensical portrayal of sniper life in the Vietnam War.

Copyright © 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Computer Gaming World.